For our fifth Rundown article, a category where making oneself look completely alien is a good thing. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Makeup as well as general commentary about the race. Tomorrow, we’ll cover a pair of categories where being powerful and compact leads to victory.

Best Makeup

Winner Predictions

Albert Nobbs

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2(New)(R)

The Iron Lady(O)(O)

Runner-Up Predictions

Albert Nobbs(R)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2(R)

The Iron Lady(R)

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Wesley Lovell: It isn’t hard to see why The Iron Lady was nominated. Converting Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher wasn’t too challenging a task, but it was one that was carried out with panache. Add to this the fact that the Academy loves bountiful prosthetic use and copious amounts of old age makeup and you have a winning recipe. Albert Nobbs takes place across a short time period and doesn’t have a lot of variety leading me to believe that if a film is going to take down the British Prime Minister, it will be Harry Potter which, itself, has a lot of prosthetic work.

Peter J. Patrick: I honestly don’t know how the Academy will vote on this one. Will they opt for a last chance to honor the Harry Potter franchise or will they opt for something less ambitious but well-done? If so, then Meryl Streep’s makeup as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady seems more likely to me than Glenn Close’s less successful male makeover in Albert Nobbs; although Janet McTeer’s is spot-on.

Tripp Burton: Year-in and year-out, this continues to prove one of the most bizarre and unpredictable categories at the Oscars. Harry Potter would seem to have this sewn up, being the biggest budget film with the most obvious prosthetic work. The other two films, though, are acting nominees that have picked up a lot of praise for their leading ladies’ transformations. Either of them could take the prize, but this category always leans heavy on the fantasy makeup, and this is the last chance to honor the work done on the Harry Potter franchise (which has amazingly never been nominated in this category before).